1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for performing high speed exponentiation, and in particular, to a system and method for performing high speed exponentiation in a secure environment.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The volume of electronic commercial transactions involving confidential information has significantly increased in recent years. For example, financial institutions, such as banks, are increasingly conducting business via electronic transfers of information. Much, if not all, of this type of information is intended to be kept confidential. Therefore, when the information is transmitted between a source and an end point, it is necessary to install safeguards to protect the confidentiality of the information in the event a third party intercepts or otherwise gains access to the transmission.
Transferred data is typically protected by encrypting it at the source and then decrypting it at the final destination. One way of encrypting and decrypting data is by use of a public key that may be stored at the source and the end designation. There are a variety of cryptographic algorithms currently available to generate a public key, thereby enabling the encrypting and decrypting of data. These algorithms all have in common the need to take one large number and raise it to another large power (i.e., perform an exponentiation function).
The currently available hardware used to implement these cryptographic algorithms cannot support a high volume of electronic commercial transactions. Specifically, existing architecture cannot perform exponentiations at the speed that is required by a customer to be able to do encryption, for example, in a banking server-type of environment.
It can be seen then, that an improved system is needed which can perform a high volume of exponentiations. It can be appreciated that a system that enhances the speed at which exponentiation is performed and which can be done in a secure environment would enable encryption to be performed at the speed and with the protection necessary to support the high volume of confidential commercial transactions that are currently performed in many environments including financial institutions.